The Original Moon Landing Footage Is Gone?

Brilliance | Dec. 09, 2017

There is no original video footage of the 1969 moon landing. Specifically, the footage of Neil Armstrong's first steps on the moon's surface is actually video of a video. This existing footage is the recording of the screen at Mission Control in Houston when the moon landing was taking place. The raw footage was accidentally taped over, but the mishap was not realized until the late '90s or early '00s. Officials at NASA discovered where the tapes ended up, but they were unfortunately part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were magnetically and re-used in an effort to save money. NASA claims that new, restored copies of the original broadcast look even better.